Here is what the resurrected Jesus tells us in the New Testament book of the Revelation:

“Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. Outside [of heaven] are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.” (Rev 22:14-15, NIV 1984, my emphasis)

Note that the LORD Jesus Christ uses the term “dogs” to describe the sexually immoral. This is a particularly awful epithet, just about the worst Jesus could use, because dogs were unclean under Jewish Law and were detestable to the Jews.

Sexual immorality includes any heterosexual sex act performed outside of marriage. But it also includes all homosexual sex acts. That God detests the homosexual sex act, no matter the context, is made plain in the following passages, one from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament:

Here, Moses is quoting the LORD:

Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable. (Leviticus 18:22, NIV)

Here, Paul is commenting on the evil that pervades the world:

They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator — who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. (Rom 1:25-27, NIV)

Many have argued that God’s attitude toward homosexuality changed somehow with Jesus’ advent. We have seen that this is not true in the two New Testament passages quoted above.

This is not about hating the people who commit sexually immoral acts. It’s a matter of hating what they do. We are commanded by the LORD to hate what is evil. Therefore the reason we are to hate sexual immorality is that it is sin (evil in God’s sight), which will lead to eternal death in hell if the sinner does not repent.

I write this blog with tremendous grief welling up in me. Because in this sexually corrupt society, it is considered okay for people to engage in sexual acts that the God of creation finds detestable. When such acts were illegal, there was an incentive for people to turn from them. Now, there is no outward incentive for homosexuals or other sexually immoral people to repent of their sin, because they think there is no cost to them in the here and now (except for contracting sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis, aids, etc., and getting pregnant out of wedlock, which many times leads to the murder (abortion) of an innocent baby). But there is an eternal cost to these poor people if they don’t repent. In the here and now they think they’re okay; but if they don’t repent, in the Judgment they will stand before a wrathful God who will hurl them into the pit of hell where they will suffer unspeakable torment for all eternity.

How sad!

I would hate to be the one to stand before God having told the sexually immoral that it is okay to commit these acts, especially if I was raised in the church, on Christian doctrine. My judgment would be much, much worse because I should have known better. And I really fear for those churches and church leaders who have ordained active homosexuals as pastors and priests. It will not go well for them in the Judgment.

I urge anyone reading this who’s leading a sexually immoral lifestyle to repent and turn from it and to the LORD Jesus Christ. God’s redemptive hand of love is extended to anyone who’s willing to accept it. Do it today before it is too late for you.

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. (1 John 1:5-7, NIV, 1984 version; all quotes below are from the 1984 NIV translation.)

Ever wonder what it means to walk in God’s light? Here are some Scripture passages that may give us some insight:

When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12.)

Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. (Col 3:5-7. )

And now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the LORD’s commands and decrees … (Deut 10:12-13. See also Matt 28:20a.)

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God — this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Rom 12:1-2.)

Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim you, who walk in the light of your presence, O LORD. They rejoice in your name all day long; they exult in your righteousness. For you are their glory and strength … Ps 89:15-17a.)

It seems clear to me that “walking in the light” means first of all that we have repented of our sin and surrendered our eternal future to the LORD Jesus. Then by the power of the Holy Spirit working in, us we put away all the evil stuff we used to do and seek to walk in the ways of the LORD. To continue to grow in this walk, we must proactively seek the light through reading and memorizing God’s word with the intention of obeying it, and we must maintain our relationship with Him through constant prayer. (Eph 6:18a.) We must constantly strive to walk in His ways.

Many think being a Christian is just about going to a church that has the name of Christ somewhere in its title and being involved in church ministries, singing praise songs, doing righteous works. Many people do these things regularly and are not walking in the light at all. There will be many people who’ve done these things all their lives and will not enter the kingdom. As Jesus told us:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ (Matt 7:21-23.)

To whomever this happens, it will mean that though he claimed to have accepted Jesus as Lord, his life has not changed at all.

The other day I was reading a book called, How Evil Works (David Kupelian, Threshold Editions, NY. NY, 2010). Kupelian quotes the result of a survey of Christian households that reveals that “only 9 percent of those self-identifying as ‘born-again Christians’ even hold a biblical worldview. … Almost half of ‘born-agains’—45 percent—teach their children there are no absolute values.” (p. 211) Can you imagine! Certainly, these 45 percent are not walking in the light of God’s truth; they cannot possibly because they do not believe in God’s absolute truths.

As John says in the passage quoted above, walking in the light means subjecting oneself to the truth of God’s word so that one’s life is changed by the power of God’s Spirit. But the light of God’s truth burns, because it forces us to examine ourselves, to look deeply into our own souls, to see ourselves as God sees us. I can tell you that this is a painful process. I believe this is what God means when He says: “Is not my word like fire,” declares the LORD, “and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces? (Jer 23:29.) This fire burns out the sin in our souls; the hammer breaks the rock of our pride into little pieces.

Here’s what David says about the severity of this process:

When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Selah

Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD” — and you forgave the guilt of my sin. (Ps 32:3-5.)

If the results of the survey quoted above are true, few born-agains have really experienced this cleansing process and their lives are not changing. The rest are not at all walking in the light as God has commanded. And we have a church filled with sin as a result. (See my blog on the Church at Sardis. )

With the reelection of Barack Obama, engineered by the Hand of Almighty God, He has pronounced His final judgment on America. I have written in a previous blog that this man was the personification of God’s judgment. Here is what God says of men like him:

There are six things the LORD hates, seven that are detestable to him:

haughty eyes,

a lying tongue,

hands that shed innocent blood,

a heart that devises wicked schemes,

feet that are quick to rush into evil,

a false witness who pours out lies

and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers. (Prov 6:16-19, NIV 1984)

Barrack Obama exemplifies every one of these detestable traits to the nth degree.

Haughty eyes: “no one can tell this man anything,” is a common complaint among those who’ve tried to work with him; his arrogance is great even for a politician.

A lying tongue: Barack Obama just gave a speech in Virginia in which he actually claimed that our annual deficits have gone down. He has lied and continues to lie about the attacks at Benghazi. He has lied about being a man that has put his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. The number of the lies he has told this country is beyond counting.

Hands that shed innocent blood: this president loves abortion on demand (e.g. the murder of innocents), so much so that he has decreed that all institutions should offer abortion services to anyone no matter their own moral objections to this horror.

A heart that devises wicked schemes: he will do anything to get his way. He has said of his opponents that if they bring a knife, he’ ll bring a gun. See, for example, the detestable campaign ad accusing his opponent of causing a woman to die from cancer. His whole campaign against his opponent was based on character assassination, rather than discussing his differences with Romney on the economic, moral, and foreign policy issues that face this country.

Feet that are quick to rush into evil: He has supported homosexual marriage which opens the door to all types of sexual perversion, and to the eventual destruction of marriage as an institution established by God to bring order to society and to insure its preservation.

A false witness that pours out lies. See 2.

A man that stirs up dissension among brothers: “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” This man is the most polarizing president we’ve seen in generations. Like all wannabe tyrants he pits one group against another: race against race, class against class, immigrants against non-immigrants, declaring that he’s the champion of the downtrodden and the poor, while making them poorer and more downtrodden.

I do not expect him to change his ways.

Therefore, because of his profligate spending, and his intention to tax small business owners to death (though he would call it taxing the rich), I expect our economy to collapse sometime in the next four years, causing great hardship for everyone.

I would expect that Iran will get nuclear weapons. The mullahs in Iran will then give them to Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas, among others, who are our mortal enemies. These creatures of evil will not hesitate to use them, and they will eventually find their way to this continent. I believe they will certainly be used against Israel. (I would not be surprised if Israel launches a preemptive attack on Iran in the next few weeks. I think, however, it is too late to prevent Iran from succeeding.)

Obama’s endorsement of homosexual marriage will hasten the destruction of marriage as an institution and with that, societal order will eventually crumble.

As a result of all this, social strife will increase in this country, eventually causing America to tear itself apart.

But for those of you who truly know the LORD Jesus Christ and truly seek to follow Him, read Psalm 91. If we satisfy the requirements of the LORD in that psalm, He promises to prevent us from being swept away by the awful calamity He has planned for America.

Here is the spiritual condition of the Church at Sardis, according to the Lord Jesus Christ:

“To the angel of the church in Sardis write: These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God. Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you. Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy.” (Revelation 3:1-4, NIV 1984 version, my emphasis.)

Over the past twenty years or so, I’ve become increasingly concerned about the spiritual health of the evangelical Christian (read “conservative” or “fundamentalist”) community in America.

The “evangelical community”, as I refer to it here, consists of the spectrum of churches, which, at one end, wave at God’s Word as being true but are drifting away from it as the source of absolute truth and moral authority, to those few at the other end that currently believe and put into practice as best they can (e.g. with pure hearts) the truths and commands of the Bible. I am not including congregations that have completely rejected God’s moral and spiritual decrees and the very truth of God’s Word itself. Congregations, for example, that have ordained active homosexuals as pastors.

This spectrum is real in today’s Christian Church. As Michael Horton says of the modern American church: “Clearly we are in perilous times. We have paid the price of ignorance and shallowness, and our fall has been great. Heretics have been tolerated as divinely-appointed messengers…”(Horton (with contributors Sproul, Koop, Nederhood and others), The Agony of Deceit: What Some TV Preachers are Really Teaching, Moody Press, Chicago, ILL, 1990, p.30) Referring to “many of the leading televangelists”, Horton then continues, quoting from 2 Peter 2 10 – 11 (NASV): “These heretics, [the Apostle] Peter continues, ‘indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires and despise authority. Daring self-willed they do not tremble when they revile angelic majesties …’ So, too, today, many of the leading televangelists rave about their power over Satan …” (Horton, p. 31. I’m not sure which version of the NASV he is using.)

A telling symptom of this spiritual decline can be seen in the divorce rate among active Christian believers (those who attend church regularly and believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, that is fundamentalist or conservative Christians). In the 1950s the Christian Divorce rate was 9.3%. By the 1980s this had risen to about 25%. The author of the study that provided that figure added this caveat, “While it may be alarming to discover that born again Christians are more likely than others to experience a divorce, that pattern has been in place for quite some time.” (My emphasis.) Currently the divorce rate among “conservative Christians” is about 38%. (One personal caveat, these numbers are fuzzy at best but I think the order of magnitudes are reliable.)

God is very specific on His view of Divorce. He says in Malachi:

Has not the LORD made them one? In flesh and spirit they are his. And why one? Because he was seeking godly offspring. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith with the wife of your youth.“I hate divorce,” says the LORD God of Israel, “and I hate a man’s covering himself with violence as well as with his garment,” says the Lord Almighty. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith. The man who hates and divorces his wife,” says the Lord, the God of Israel, “does violence to the one he should protect,” says the LORD Almighty. So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful. (Malachi 2:15 – 16, NIV 1984.)

And God said when he walked the earth with us:

Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.” (Matthew 19:8-10, NIV 1984, my emphasis.)

Marriage is indeed hard, as the disciples’ response indicates. And the LORD our God knew that when He made these decrees. But in a Christian marriage, the couple makes a solemn vow before God Himself to stay married. When either one or both break that vow, they bring judgment on themselves. If the church tolerates this sin, it will bring judgment on itself as well.

Another telling symptom of the spiritual decay in the evangelical community was the reaction to a book called The Shack by William P. Young. As I read it, The Shack comes right out and denies the most basic truth of Christianity: that Jesus is the only way to heaven. It also has little gems like “evil is just the absence of good”, which is a lie right out of the pit of Hell. A careful deconstruction of The Shack by Gary Marble is provided here, from which I quote below.

In a healthy spiritual community this book would have been universally reviled for the abomination that it is. But it was not, rather it became very popular. Here is Mr. Marble’s conclusion about the evangelical response to the book: “This book seems to have an audience with Evangelicals, which is curious for a book about the nature of God (in the form of an allegory-not just fiction) that makes no claims to being Bible based, and in fact, moves away intentionally from being Bible based. … I have personally communicated with several Evangelicals who have read the book. Some have said they were uncomfortable with it, while others did not notice any particular problem with the book. A large church in my area has had the author speak at the church and sells the book in their bookstore with no particular warning to the flock there. It is strange how Evangelicals are courting this man who is most certainly not Evangelical himself (not if you define Evangelicalism in any conservative sense). This book may be the miner’s canary as it says something about the poor state of Evangelicalism.” (My emphasis.)

Mr. Marble, giving the reason for his post, asks, “What if you consider yourself a Bible believing Evangelical Christian and you just read a book containing multiple fairly blatant heresies and you missed them? Would that get your attention? Wouldn’t you want to know what you missed, and more importantly (personally for you), why did you miss them? Does this mean you might be missing other errors in your Christian walk?” (My emphasis.) That he even has to ask the question of this abomination of a book is indicative of the decrepit spiritual state of our church here in America.

Even more appalling is that there are now movements in the evangelical community to deny the very existence of absolute truth itself. That is a violation of the most fundamental purpose of God’s church which is to be the very pillar and foundation of the truth.

John MacArthur, in his book The Truth War, points out that in the so-called Emerging Church, “[which] is the popular name for an informal affiliation of Christian communities worldwide who want to revamp the church … and remodel the way we think of truth itself. … [o]ne predominant theme pervades the whole article, in the Emerging Church movement, truth (to whatever degree such a concept is even recognized) is assumed to be inherently hazy, indistinct, and uncertain—perhaps even ultimately unknowable.” ( MacAurthur, The Truth War, Thomas Nelson, Nashville, Tenn, 2007, Introduction, pages ix – x. Emphasis in original. MacArthur was referring to an article on the Emerging Church in Christianity Today.)

By discarding the notion of absolute truth, one must necessarily doubt that the Word of God as recorded in the Bible gives us absolute truth. Then one must doubt the truth about Jesus’ deity, His death and resurrection, about His very Person as the creator of the universe. (John 1:2) One must doubt the truth about the Gospel which reveals the power of salvation that comes from God, a righteousness that comes from first to last by faith. (Paraphrase of Romans 1:16 – 17 ) One must also doubt that the Bible is our inerrant guidepost to living the way God requires. If we take the notion of absolute truth away, we are left with nothing on which to base our faith.

There is much more that is truly appalling going in the evangelical community than I can relate here. I would recommend the two books quoted above—The Truth Wars by John MacArthur, and the Agony of Deceit, an anthology of articles edited by Michael Horton—to get a good overview.

Therefore, in my view, our church has become at least like the one at Sardis. (Mr. Marble quotes the letter to the Laodicean church (Revelation 3: 14 – 20), in his critique. I’m not sure which church is in the worse spiritual state, but both letters promise severe judgment if the churches fail to repent.) If that is true, we serious Christians should be quaking in our boots because the Lord has promised to bring us specifically and the whole congregation generally into judgment. I don’t think this will be pretty for I also believe that if we do not heed our Lord’s admonition to repent, we will also be swept way when God brings destruction upon America.

If you read the thread below, you will know that I have said that God was and is in control of all things, including the holocaust and including our president. Now I am no one, and have no particular standing in the body of Christ, that is His church, so I can understand why anyone would doubt what I’ve said, despite the evidence I gave from God’s Word. But Charles Stanley, a great man of God, does have standing. Watch this video of his most recent sermon, Victor or Victim where he says exactly what I said below (not the exact same words because he is not specifically talking about the impending judgment of America as I was). Think about the implications. If God controls everything he controls who runs this country from top to bottom. If God has given us an ungodly liar for a president, who’s oft stated goal is to dismantle America and rebuild it from the ground up, think what that means.

Update 9-26-12

More evidence here that our president was lying to us about the 9/11/2012 attacks on our embassy in Libya comes from the Libyan President himself. He has stated flatly that these attacks were not a response to an anti-muslim film that had been available on the net for 6 months, but that they were a planned assualt “to carry a certain message”.

(All Scripture references or quotations are from the NIV translation of the Bible, 1984 version)

America was established in the Name of God. 52 of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence were Christian believers and four were Unitarian deists (the most famous being Thomas Jefferson. Deists say that there is a God though He is not necessarily the personal God of the Bible.). All through American history, our God has intervened on our behalf: He made this country the greatest nation in the history of man, He preserved the union during the Civil War, and He gave us victory in the two world wars of the 20th century. (An extensive discussion of this subject is given in Under God by Toby Mac and Michael Tait, Bethany House, Bloomington, Minn, 2004). God’s intervention in our affairs is second only to His shepherding of Israel through the ages.

Our God is absolutely sovereign (Lamentations 5:19 , Daniel 4:3, and many other examples.) His Name, Sovereign LORD, appears about 297 times in the NIV translation of the O.T. and 6 times in the N.T.

The word “sovereign” means that nothing happens in creation or in heaven or in any spiritual realm that does not pass through the portal of God’s will. Nothing!

God is the author of all things that exist or happen in creation whether it be in the heavenly or material realms. Here are His own words: “I am the LORD, and there is no other. I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things.” (Isaiah 45:6-7 ) And again in the New Testament: “For by him [Jesus as the great I AM (John 8:58). ] all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:16 – 17 ).

Therefore, when a nation is destroyed, God either has caused it directly or has allowed it. The Jewish Holocaust, horrible as it was, was allowed by God to happen for his own righteous purposes. (See a thorough discussion of Jewish Holocaust Theology here. Note this article mentions that some Rabbi’s attributed the Holocaust to God’s reaction to Jewish sins in a doctrine called mi-penei hataeinu.) Scripture makes clear that all things ultimately serve God’s righteous purposes. See for example Psalm 119: 91 . Also all things were created to serve God’s righteous purposes. See Proverbs 16:4.

Therefore, when anyone rises to lead a nation, either God has put him there directly or he has allowed him to become leader. For example, God calls King Nebuchadnezzar His servant (Jeremiah 25:9 ). It was this vicious king whose country, Babylon, God called to destroy Judah, the Southern Kingdom of Israel because of their sin. (Jeremiah 25: 9 – 11). In the N.T. when Pontius Pilate says: “Do you refuse to speak to me? … Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?” Jesus answered, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above.”( John 19:10-11).

Now the Sons of Jacob (Israel) had rejected their God (Jeremiah 15:6), so God rejected them and decreed destruction for them. (Jeremiah 15:6b – 9). This passage includes this frightening warning: “At midday I will bring a destroyer against the mothers of their young men; suddenly I will bring down on them anguish and terror.” (Jeremiah 15:8) God also says that if any nation will not listen to His warnings against rejecting the truths of His Word, He will destroy that nation. (Jeremiah 12:17) In fact, if a nation or society persists in denying Him and following evil, God will actually push that nation away so that it will certainly be destroyed. As the Holy Spirit warns us through the Apostle Paul: “They [will] perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.” (2 Thessalonians 2:10-12)

21st century America fits the profile of a nation subject to destruction, especially since America was founded in His Name. It has clearly rejected the ways of God, starting with a pair of 1963 Supreme Court decisions outlawing prayer and reading the Bible in public schools. It continued with the sexual revolution of the 60s that continues to this day, with the ultimate conclusion of giving homosexuals the “right” to marry. The “right” to murder innocents has become the law of the land in the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. I believe that like the sons of Jacob who rejected God, America also has been rejected by Him.

Therefore He has given us Barack Obama as President. If you consider his utter lack of qualification to lead this country and the circumstances surrounding his election such as the tremendous delusional thinking that accompanied his campaign and election (e.g. “Obama … is sort of God”) it could only have been God’s direct intervention in our politics.

Our president is a consummate liar; so much so that even his opponent has said during this presidential campaign that Obama does not tell the truth. (When has a president ever before been accused of being a liar so publicly?) This characteristic is most clearly expressed in Obama’s campaign ad accusing his opponent of giving a woman cancer, which is just as ludicrous as it is false and mean and contemptible. Of course he’s lied about the impacts of Obama Care, and about everything else he has done. He has most recently lied to our faces about the cause of the current rage against America in Egypt, Libya, and other Middle Eastern countries. He also constantly violates his Presidential oath to protect and defend the constitution. An example is when he refused to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, which is the law of the land, before the Supreme Court.

This man, along with his political party, clearly loves abortion and homosexual rights, which are detestable to our God and Father. (Which is clear from their 2012 Campaign Platform.)

And our president clearly loves to sow dissension among different classes of America, pitting the millionaires and billionaires (presumably anyone who makes over $250,000 per year) and blacks against whites (“If I had a son he’d look like Trayvon”). According to the Washington Post, not known for its support of right wing causes, this man is the most polarizing president ever. (Recall he promised to be a uniter not a divider. Clearly another lie.)

Our president clearly despises Israel, our best ally and only real democracy in the Middle East. He has worked overtime to deny Israel the right to defend itself by taking out Iran’s nuclear capability. (He recently snubbed the Israeli Prime Minister who asked for an hour with him to discuss Iran and its desire to destroy Israel.) And once Iran gets this capability, it has promised to annihilate the Sons of Jacob. This is why the current Israeli Prime Minister has taken such extraordinary steps to publicly call Obama out on the issue of drawing a red line against Iran’s nuclear aspirations. Certainly once Iran gets the Bomb, it will try carry out its promise to destroy Israel; and it will certainly give the Bomb to its proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas, and even to Al-Qaida, all sons of Satan, who will also certainly try to find a way to use the Bomb on American soil, as well as against American installations in the Middle East and around the world.

Yes, indeed, Barack Obama is the personification of God’s rejection of America. Don’t be surprised if this despicable man is reelected. If he is, America, the land of opportunity that we have known, will cease to exist; it will become like a European nanny state. I also believe American society will be riven by internal violence, the fruit of our president’s pitting one class against another, one race against another. And eventually America will be destroyed as a country if the sons of Satan in Iran and their proxies get a nuclear weapon.

America, the America I was born into, is dying. You can see it in the excremental political discourse where a president of the United States of America allows his minions to accuse his opponent of killing a woman by giving her cancer. And no one in the major news media even seems to care.

When a country or society is dying, its art mirrors an aroma of decay. This happened in Northern Europe during the years of the black plague in the 14th century. Before the plague, paintings were generally about happy subjects, noble subjects such as angels, knights, and heroes. The colors were light and airy pastels. But during the plague the art turned dark: dark colors, dark themes, and tortured subjects.

So you can see the same phenomena in America. The TV programs and movies are full of perverse sex, violence, tragedy; many are just too filthy to watch. In the violence and tragedy genre, we have The Dark Knight Rises, which is akin to the wail of a dying society, the fetid stench of a decomposing sprit. It’s interesting how the people of Gotham City instinctively follow Bane, a representation of evil incarnate (though the producers and writers of the movie may not have seen it that way.) There is nothing at all socially redeeming in this movie, except as a loud and clear message that the society we baby boomers used to know has gone almost totally into the sewer of human existence. (I say almost because of The Odd Life of Timothy Green, a recently released movie I discuss below.)

Another more surprising example is the recent release of ParaNorman, marketed as an “animated zombie comedy” by the Portland, Oregon studio Liaka. (Google ParaNorman to get the particulars.) It was also clearly marketed as a movie for children. When I saw the trailers it seemed interesting. But when I got into the theater, what I saw looked like the biography of one of the kids who shot up Columbine High School in April of 1999. Norman is a kid who sees ghosts. No wonder: the wall of his bedroom is papered with skulls and crossbones, images of zombies, of dismembered bodies, and of people being brutally slain. Every image is a scream of pain. The movie has tremendously frightening images, monstrous faces in the sky and partially dismembered bodies coming out of the ground, things that would have been unthinkable as appropriate fare for children when I was growing up in the 1950s.

Now, if I had been watching this movie by myself, I might have been able to endure it, considering it an anthropological detritus of a spiritually dead and empty society. But I walked out of the movie about thirty minutes in. Why? Because people had their very young children watching it. I was so uncomfortable for those impressionable children I just could not stand being in the same theater with them and the unspeakable garbage unfolding on the screen. I felt if I stayed, I’d jump out of my seat and yell at the parents: “What do you think you’re doing feeding your two, three and four year olds this emotional and spiritual poison?” Here is the best that a film reviewer could say about it: “Prenderghast [Norman’s crazy uncle], who promptly croaks, also appears to Norman from the bowels [sic] of a school toilet. It’s the scene that took a year to shoot, and it’s when “ParaNorman” is at its best: brilliantly textured, comical and bizarre.” The bowels of a toilet? (Maybe the reviewer meant bowl of a toilet, instead.) So the best scene of the movie is when a ghost appears in a toilet bowl. I’ve never personally found the “bowels of a toilet” funny. But this is an apt evaluation of this monstrosity and of the warped and depraved mindset that created it.

But even when something’s dying, it may show a flicker of life before it goes. In America, such was the case with The Odd Life of Timothy Green made by Walt Disney Pictures. It’s amazing that a film of such unabashed sweetness could have been made in this cynical age without a shred of cynicism. Not to give too much away, Jenifer Garner and Joel Edgerton play (with great aplomb) childless parents who’ve been trying for years to have a baby. But they cannot and they are desolate. So they pretend one last time to have had a kid, and they fantasize about what he would have been like. They write down these worthy attributes on slips of paper, put them in a box and bury the box in their garden. (True to the age, they’re apparently big on eating “organic” food.) During a supernatural rain storm that night, Timothy pops out of the garden, with green leaves growing out of his legs. What are the leaves for? That’s for me to know and you to find out. Needless to say, this little boy brings unimaginable joy to these fine people.

One thing I found really interesting about the movie is this: you’d think that when a childless couple suddenly shows up in the neighborhood with a ten year old boy, calling him their son, the social services vultures and other authorities would be all over it. Not in this movie. They are never even asked where this boy came from. You too can puzzle over why that is, if you see this wonderful movie. I’d certainly recommend it for children, and parents, of any age.

Oh, one other thing: it’s ironic that a movie that shows how valuable and wonderful having a child can come out of society that has routinely murdered over 54 million children since 1973. This is also the age of the Holocaust of Blood in America. When God destroys this country, it will be remembered as one of the contributing factors, if there’s anyone left in America to remember it at all.

Ever since I was a small boy, I’ve been interested in the cosmos. The first several novels I read as a child were science fiction novels: The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov and The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke. Over the past few years I’ve read a lot about the universe we live in. It is unbelievably vast: according to astronomer and astrophysicist Carl Sagan there are more stars in the universe than the number of grains of sand on all the beaches of the world. And it’s size is truly beyond comprehension: estimates range from 93 billion light years in diameter to about 156 billion light years; that’s about 156 trillion times the diameter of the orbit of Pluto. (1 Light Year ~ 6 trillion miles; the diameter of the orbit of Pluto equals about 6 billion miles, so 1 Light Year is about 1000 times the diameter of Pluto’s orbit.)

In Psalm 19, it says the heavens declare the glory of God and the skies proclaim the work of His hands. As such God exists outside of the universe; he is infinite meaning he is infinitely bigger than the this vast universe of ours. Here is a video that I produced that gives some tiny understanding of how the LORD our God compares to our universe.

Sometimes I see something so remarkable I get the chills. Check out this video of the landing of a new Rover on Mars this weekend. It’ll blow your minds.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

This is the Astronomy Picture of the Day webpage. If what comes up is not dated July 12, 2012 at the top of the screen, scroll to the bottom of the screen and select the archive and select the July 12 version.

The ability of the human mind to create things is truly extraordinary, and this leads to a lot of mistaken pride. We must realize first of all that it is God Himself who has blessed us with our creative ability. While man can create marvelously complex machines and processes like the one you see on the video, we will never be able to create matter and energy themselves. I doubt we will ever be able to create a DNA molecule, much less a living organism, from the base elements of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and the other elements that compose a living cell. These mysteries are the province of God alone. And though we explore the cosmos for a million years, we will never even scratch the surface of what there is to know about the Universe our God has created.

There will be a video coming out in a few weeks (hopefully) about the majesty of God verses the vastness of the universe. I will let you know when that happens.

Episodes

7 25 2012 update

As one might expect, the Aurora Colorado incident has been analyzed by hundreds if not thousands of talking heads from the left and the right of the political spectrum. What I’ve seen so far is that people are blaming the violence in the movies and in the media for this episode. As I said below, and I believe with all my heart, the Dark Knight Rises was not the cause of James Homes’ murderous rampage. Both the movie and the shooting were a symptom of the creeping evil that has taken hold of our society; they are merely an expression of the spirit of murder that has gripped this country and it as more completely expressed in the existence of such horrific evils as Planned Parenthood and abortion on demand.

One note, there was a young black women on the street today asking if I supported Planned Parenthood. She had some type of petition in her hands. I silently shook my head and walked on. I should have asked her how she thought Planned Parenthood got started. It was promoted by the early feminist movement, among other Progressive movements of the early 20th century, as a way to abort the babies of people of color who were considered undesirable by those Progressives of the early 2oth century. How ironic: a black person soliciting support for an institution that was designed to kill her in the womb.

Episodes

Things I see and Hear

It’s hard watching your country die. As I write this America is certainly dying; that is the America we knew and loved has been and is being transformed into an unrecognizably dark thing that would have horrified the signers of the Declaration of Independence, over 50 of which were born-again Christians. The unspeakable incident that occurred in Aurora Colorado a few days ago is but a symptom of the larger spiritual disease that is killing (has almost completely killed) the America that I knew and loved.

I learned in an art class some years ago how the media can reflect the darkness devouring a society. During the plague years in Europe in the 14th century, one could see how the art of that period took on a dark and gloomy aspect. The spiritual plague sweeping America is also being reflected in the dark and gloomy offerings coming out of Hollywood and by the lies and propaganda spewed out by the left-controlled news and other popular media.

The Dark Knight Rises movie is a portrait of what American society has become and what awaits it at the bottom of the abyss in which it is sinking. It was no accident, I think, that James Holmes decided to shoot up a theater in which this movie was playing. For in the movie unspeakable evil has risen in Gothom City and begins killing people by the hundreds and thousands. So, unspeakable evil arose in Aurora Colorado and murdered a dozen people and wounded fifty or so more.

Is it surprising that this should occur in a society that glorifies murder of the innocents through abortion and all kinds of sexual perversions? Is it surprising that this occurred in a society where murderers and violent criminals of all kinds never pay for their crimes against society; where the death penalty is actually considered uncivilized by the self-anointed elites? Is it surprising this occurred in a society where the national media, and our politicians and cultural leaders throw truth to the wind and support every destructive policy the political left serves up to them? And do we think for one minute that the victims of James Eagen Jones will get the justice they deserve: that this man will be executed for his unspeakable crimes?

If any of you on the Progressive Right (erroneously called “conservative”: I don’t call myself a Conservative, for I personally am not politically “conservative” by any stretch of the imagination) want to gain an understanding of what’s happened to America from a purely secular point of view, I would recommend reading the following books by Thomas Sowell:

Black Rednecks and White Liberals

Intellectuals and Society

The Vision of the Anointed (self congratulation as a basis for social policy)

all of which can be found by title or author on Amazon.com. Another book that you might find interesting that explains why our education system is failing (and is therefore really depressing) is No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning by two Harvard professors, Abigail and Stephen Thurnstrom.

We who worship the LORD of the universe, already know what’s happened in America: we’ve rejected God and His value system, and we are murdering ourselves and our country is dying as a result.

How I grieve!

Episodes

Things I See and Hear (July 9, 2012)

Social Justice: we hear that term every day. On the surface it seems like a wonderful concept. The idea is to engineer society so that there will be no income or wealth inequities, which its proponents consider evil. It is taken as a matter of self-evident truth that if society can realize this it will reach a plain of Righteousness and Justice that has never been realized in all the thousands of years of human history; it will be called Utopia. (Incidentally, Utopia was a word created by Thomas Moore from two Greek words ou-topos meaning “no-place”.) Too bad the concept has morphed in America into a destructive and self-defeating theology.

America, as originally conceived, was a land where a person would be free to develop his own skills and abilities to pursue life, liberty and happiness. It was hoped that if a person could do that, he would live a productive, happy and contented life. And for millions of people this has been their experience.

But Social Justice as perceived by its high priests, has gone way beyond this principle. It is about their distorted concept of “fairness” which means that every one gets equal amounts of wealth and income no matter how hard they work. As put into practice by today’s politicians, people who produce wealth must have ever larger portions of their income and wealth confiscated and handed out to whomever SJ’s high priests (and politicians) favor politically. (In America today, the top 1% of income earners pay over 38% of income taxes.) It is the underlying principle of our President’s and his party’s politics. And not of theirs only, but of many in the evangelical community, unfortunately. Again, Social Justice requires that all groups have equal outcomes in terms of wealth received and income generated rather than equal opportunities to produce wealth and receive income for individuals.

For reasons to be explained below, there is no way to eliminate income and wealth inequalities in society. Many governments have tried. The most extreme of these social engineering experiments was carried out in the old Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, and North Korea. What they ended up with was a vast majority of poor people and a thin veneer of wealthy murderous overlords.

It is clear to me, on the other hand, that America, before it became a devouring welfare state, had a system that would minimize the degree of such difference as much as humanly possible, while keeping the wealth generating machine intact. For example, while the “poor” in this country don’t have as much as the “rich”, the average “poor” person in this country has more material wealth than the average non-poor European.

(Note that I am not advocating that society should not help the poor, or those who are disabled or disadvantaged in some other way. Nor am I advocating that we stop working to eliminate all the effects of racism and other forms of discrimination which hinder certain people from having equal opportunity to generate wealth and income.)

The problem is that there will always be “rich” and “poor” no matter what SJ’s high priests do. Here are some reasons why (not taking into account arbitrary means of limiting wealth generation such as racism or other forms of discrimination):

God has created human beings with different skills and aptitudes: “Rich and poor have this in common: The LORD is the Maker of them all.” (Proverbs 22:2) The “rich” have been given the ability to generate wealth by God Himself, as Moses said to Israel: “But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth …” (Deuteronomy 8:18a). The producers of wealth are generally persons of exceptional intellect and skill such as brilliant scientists, engineers, doctors, entrepreneurs; while others can do wonderful things working with their hands like carpenters, artists, etc. But there are others who have not been so gifted. It’s the way of Creation, the natural order of things. I would put it to you that since God is good and just and fair, this inequality, in and of itself, cannot be an unfair situation as far as He is concerned. (Again, I’m not talking about inequalities in wealth and income generated by arbitrary forms of discrimination, such as racial discrimination.)

Even if every citizen of a country, at every given year of their adult life, earned exactly the same income and had exactly the same behavior patterns with regard to how much of that income they saved, older citizens would have more wealth and generally higher income because they would have advanced in income earning power as they got more experience and would have generated more income and thereby would have acquired more wealth through saving.

Different cultural groups show different behavior patterns and value systems which affect their ability to generate wealth and income. Some tend to value education and hard work (Asian Americans are a good example) and will therefore earn more and accumulate more wealth than those who tend to value education and hard work less. (This is a trap many in the black community have fallen into. See Thomas Sowell’s book, Black Rednecks and White Liberals, Encounter Books, NY, NY, 2006. See also Abigail and Stephen Thernstrom, No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning, Simon & Schuster, NY, NY, 2003 ).

Since SJ theology fights against this “natural order of things” it can only produce bad outcomes.

For example, the only way inequalities in income and wealth can be addressed to the point of achieving the SJ’s high priest’s goal is through coercive means, namely through increasingly confiscatory taxes and oppressive laws that will eventually lead to a police state. (See Jean-Fançois Revel’s book, Last Exit to Utopia: the Survival of Socialism in a Post-Soviet Era, Translated by Diarmid V.C. Cammell, Encounter Books, NY, NY, 2009.)

Another bad outcome is that those who produce little or nothing are brainwashed by SJ’s high priests to believe that they are entitled to the product of other people’s work. As Huey P. Long was quoted as saying, “If you aren’t getting something for nothing you aren’t getting your fair share.” (I cannot find the source of this quote, though it exists on many web sites.) The detestable entitlement mindset robs the “poor” of the incentive to develop their own wealth producing skills. If everything is handed to you because you fall below some arbitrary level of income, or if you are the member of some favored “minority” group, then you will think you are entitled to these handouts. And because this has trapped you in poverty, you will feel victimized. (Rightly so!)

And who are your oppressors according the high priests? Why everyone who has more ability to produce wealth than you e.g. “the rich”, as well as the big corporations, banks, and those who do not buy into the SJ theology. These are the demons of this theology. But there are also angels: the intellectuals and politicians who adhere to it, who worship it, and who implement it through confiscatory and tyrannical policies.

It is clear that the pervasiveness of the SJ theology in our politics has caused increased strife in American society. There is resentment from those who work hard to produce wealth when the product of their labor is arbitrarily taken from them and handed to an able-bodied person who produces little or nothing. (I’m not including the “lame, halt and blind” that George McGovern always referred to. Society should help them; although I believe leaving it to the Feds to do this is the worst possible alternative.) And those who have been convinced that they are entitled to these handouts will react violently when they don’t get what they want: what they think they are entitled to. See, for example, the violent and destructive Occupy Wall Street movement.

I don’t believe that the concept of Social Justice is pleasing to God. It sounds great, but it has unleashed a destructive evil on American society that is helping to rip America apart. I believe that Jesus was referring to men and women like the high priests of Social Justice as “false prophets” when He said, “ ‘ Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them.’ ” Their fruit will be the destruction of American society as we know it and the spread of poverty throughout the land.

You must surely recall the incident where a neighborhood watch volunteer named George Zimmerman killed a young black man named Trayvon Martin. NBC news was caught editing a tape of the Zimmerman 911 call to make it sound like Zimmerman had picked out Martin because he was black, when in fact that was not the case. NBC fired the editor over this and claimed that they did not intentionally edit this tape this way. What a lie! Any idiot could see through this.

More recently MSNBC edited a video of Mitt Romney’s visit to a store where he commented on certain touchtone keypad equipment the store used. They edited the video to make it look like Romney was amazed that there might be such technology: message being this guy’s a rube and should not be president. Romney’s message was, in reality, about how competition in the private sector produces efficiencies that are not mirrored when the government runs something. (Like the Obama Nation Health Care law, just approved by the Supreme Court.)

Then there was the Dan Rather CBS News incident during the Bush years where Rather was caught pushing a forged document indicating, as I recall, that Bush had lied about his National Guard service. Mr. Rather was fired as a result of that.

Of course there are thousands more of examples. Any honest media watchdog agency could provide them.

Such media lies follow a long tradition of the media being little less than a left-wing propaganda machine.

I’ve been reading an interesting book by Thomas Sowell called Intellectuals and Society (Basic Books, NY, NY, 2011). Dr. Thomas Sowell, a well-known economist, makes many comments that touch on this topic in his book (numbers in parentheses represent page numbers in his book).

Re: The Soviet Union

If you were a reader of the news media in the 1930’s, particularly the New York Times, you would have been convinced that the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin was the “moral top of the world.” (from Edmund Wilson, literary critic, quoted on p. 213. This idiocy was not constrained to gushing praise of Joe Stalin’s Soviet Union. You older readers probably remember Jane Fonda’s gushing praise of North Vietnam and communism in the 1970s. This was before the government of the North killed over 1 million people after we slunk out of South Vietnam in the early 1970s. This was also before Communist murderer Pol Pot killed between 2 – 3 million people in Cambodia during that same time period.

But Did you know that in the 1930’s Joseph Stalin’s government created a famine in Ukraine that eventually starved to death about 6.0 million human beings (193-194). This was later confirmed when, under Mikhial Gorbechev, the Soviet archives were opened.(194). (According to the Black Book of Communism, estimates of the number of Soviet citizens murdered under Uncle Joe’s rule range from 35 to 50 million. I’ve seen estimates as high as 60 million elsewhere.)

Now during the time of the Ukraine atrocity, a reporter from the New York Times named Walter Duranty wrote, “There is no famine or actual starvation, nor is their likely to be.” (quoted on p. 194) Later a British diplomat reported to London that “Mr. Duranty thinks it quite possible that as many as 10 million people may have died directly or indirectly.” For lying through his teeth Mr. Duranty got a Pulitzer prize. (also quoted on p. 194).

On the other hand, a British writer named Malcom Muggeridge reported that peasants in Ukraine were indeed starving and that “the man-made famine in Ukraine was one of the most monstrous crimes in history …” What was this honest man’s reward: he was drummed out of the media for his “hysterical tirade”, and could not get a job anywhere as a writer. (194) (If you want to get more information on the atrocities committed by communist governments, Google “The Black Book of Communism.” It’s available on Amazon. The statistics and incidents recorded in that book are based on the scholarly work of several French historians (not right-wingers by any stretch!) who combed through the Soviet archives mentioned above.)

Re: Herbert Hoover

Based on our history lessons “everyone knows” that Herbert Hoover caused the Great Depression, that he did nothing for the poor people of America starving in the streets, that he was in the pockets of the robber barons of Industry; in short, that he was an all round really bad man. This has been the common view of Hoover in the popular media for over eighty years. I never saw anything to balance that view until a few years ago.

But did you know that Herbert Hoover was one of the great philanthropists of the 20th century, and maybe would have been known “as one of the greatest humanitarians of the century” had he not had the misfortune of being president during the start of the Great Depression? (203) Right after World War I there were millions of people in Europe suffering from hunger. According to Dr. Sowell, “Hoover formed a philanthropic organization to get food to them on a massive scale. However, realizing that if he operated in the usual way, by first raising money from donations and then buying the food, people would be dying…” So Hoover, taking what I consider to be an enormous personal risk, bought the food first with his own personal fortune and shipped it to and distributed it through Europe and then eventually covered the cost by raising donations.(203)

Did you also know that during the beginning of the Great Depression Hoover raised taxes rates on the rich from 30 percent to over 60 percent? And that “the real Hoover was praised by the head of the American Federation of Labor for his efforts to keep industry from cutting workers’ wages during the depression.” (205)

As I point out above, this lying to the public by the popular media certainly hasn’t stopped in our day. Why, then, do you suppose they have so much power over us? Why do we buy into their lies? And what does this suggest about our future as a free country where all points of view are respected?

Episodes

Things I see and hear

I saw a movie called THE MIST recently. It is based on a novel by Stephen King. It’s a gruesome story (of course) about some deadly creatures that get released onto earth from another dimension. These creatures exist only in the mist that has poured out of this other world. The movie is shot almost entirely in a grocery store where several dozen people have been trapped. If anyone goes out into the mist, he is brutally killed. (Not the most uplifting movie to watch, I admit.) But there was one character who claimed to know God. Her soul, however, was full of darkness and evil. And like the Evil One, she quoted Scripture incessantly. It’s hard to describe this character within the length constraints of this blog, except to say, she is everything evil anyone has ever thought about God, God’s people or His church: She was accusatory, judgmental, without compassion or love, full of hatred, and just plain awful; she even started demanding human sacrifices to appease the “forces of hell” that had been released into the world. By extension, of course, her God must be this same way. This indicates to me how Mr. King views God and his church.

Needless to say, this movie saddened me greatly. Think of all the people who were turned away from God when they saw this. Think of the darkness of the soul that wrote this book. Yet I’m wondering if the behavior of the church over the past millennium has not merited some of this criticism. Think of the inquisition, for example. What a shame that the church could be slandered in this way. What have we done?

I was having a cup of coffee at a local coffee shop, reading. A lesbian couple came into the shop and started “making out”. I cannot tell you how uncomfortable this made me. There’s a time and a place for everything, except, of course, for homosexual behavior. Seeing anyone “making out” would leave an uncomfortable feeling. Seeing homosexual’s make out left me nauseous. And my heart went out to them: the judgment they face in the next life is so awful, it cannot be described in human terms. I’m wondering how they might have reacted if I had mentioned my feelings to them. Given the viciousness of the society we live in, they probably would have thrown a cup of hot coffee at me. I am praying for them.

Finally:

I was reading the prophet Haggai and the Lord says:

“Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.” (Hag 1:5-6) And then the Lord says, “Therefore, because [you have refused to rebuild my temple] the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth its crops. I called for a drought on the fields and the mountains, on the grain, the new wine, the oil and whatever the ground produces, on men and cattle, and on the labor of your hands.” (Hag 1:10-11)

Well, I personally have written six books, with two more on the way. I have spent thousands of dollars on them, and have gotten little in return. One thing I’m sure of: it was and is the Lord’s will for me to write. The one thing I’m not sure of is, am I doing something, or not doing something that has caused the Lord to call a draught on “the labor of my hands”? One tidbit of information: He has continued to bless me in many other ways. I have yet to receive the blessing of book sales, however. It’s about more than the money. I believe the books have merit both artistically and spiritually. The few readers I do have have said that my work has impacted their lives in a significant way. So, I’m continuing to “give careful thought” to my ways.

That’s the blog this time. Updates should be coming every other day or so.

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” (Matt 7:21-23)

[Jesus said,] “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matt 7:11)

We are a society that is being destroyed by “well intended” policies. The welfare state, which has destroyed millions of lives, especially in the black community, started based on good intentions. Lyndon Johnson introduced the 1964/65 Great Society legislation by saying it would be a help up, not a hand out. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=28464#axzz1wx6DFZIw

But it has not turned out to be a help up at all, but just one hand out after another. Generations of people have grown up on welfare. Generations of lives have been destroyed thereby, especially in the black community. Giving people money without requiring that they earn it, destroys their willingness to work, and it sabotages their self-esteem. When one looses his/her self esteem, he/she feels victimized and he/she gets angry. So now, after 50 years of the destructive welfare policies we “naturally” live in a society full of anger and hate where everyone is a victim. This is especially true in the black community where victimhood is preached everyday.

“All Americans, without regard to party, know that our welfare system is broken, that it teaches the wrong values, rewards the wrong choices, hurts those it was meant to help,” Clinton said. “We also know that no one wants to change the current system in a good way more than people who are trapped in it.”

And any one of you can all look into your own souls and see that this would be true of you too, if you were (or are) unfortunate enough to be a client of (and a slave to) the welfare state.

Now, Scripture is clear: even though all of us are evil (absent the saving work of God’s Spirit in our lives) we can do good things as God would judge them. And certainly I believe the genesis of the welfare state was based on the good intention to help people in need. Who, after all, seeing someone starving would not want to give him/her food to eat? (Though I don’t believe any able-bodied person in the U.S. was starving in 1964.) Who, seeing someone going naked, would not want to give them clothing to wear? (Again, I don’t believe any able-bodied person was going naked in America in 1964.) Who, seeing someone struggling to support themselves in this dog-eat-dog society would not want to give him/her a helping hand to allow him/her to succeed? (This was certainly true of millions of people in America in 1964, especially in the black community.)

But my question is this: if after 50 years and $16 trillion dollars of not only failed welfare state policies but of the destruction they have caused, can one really claim to have good intentions by continuing to support and facilitate these destructive policies? Rather, can it be reasonably interpreted that those who continue to support these destructive policies don’t really care about the people they are supposedly trying to help? Can it not be reasonably inferred that they are really just flattering themselves and pumping up their own egos at the expense of those who are their true victims: the people enslaved by the welfare state, and the dependent mentality it fosters? Can it not be reasonably be inferred that these people in all reality need the poor and the destitute to remain poor and destitute so that they will have a constituency that will help them maintain their political power?

Recall when a massive change to the welfare program, called workfare, was passed in 1996 there were howls of protest from the Welfare State promulgators, that requiring people to actually work for their benefits would leave people starving in the streets; children would starve; whole families would starve, and all manner of cataclysmic evil would rain down on America. (Bill Clinton’s words above were stated in the context of this workfare reform effort and the debate that resulted.)

Needless to say, none of these catastrophes happened, and the worst fears of those who howled loudest did not materialize. The welfare roles were reduced dramatically and people whose families had been dependent on welfare for generations were finding work and breaking the chains that bound them without hope to dependence on welfare. Yet in the face of this, in 2009, a bill was introduced to reverse these beneficial changes. I cannot determine whether this bill was passed or not, but the very idea that it would have been introduced in the first place tells me that those who support the welfare state do not have the best interests of its slaves at heart. I believe the very introduction of this bill answers my question above: these politicians need the poor and destitute to remain poor and destitute so that they, the Welfare State supporters, will continue to control the destitute’s lives, keep them dependent, and thereby retain their power over them.

The passage from Matthew chapter 7 above states clearly that there will be those who might have thought they were doing good, but who in the end will be cast into the burning fires of hell because they were doing evil in God’s eyes. And certainly, the Welfare State has produced only evil in the lives it has destroyed. But this passage implies to me that there are many who are knowingly doing evil who will also be thrown into the burning fires of hell, though they claimed they were doing good.

God save America from the continued expansion of this evil program, and from our “good intentions”. If He does not, America will impale itself on them: anger and hate will continue to spread, and civil strife will break out; eventually society will destroy itself. We have already seen the beginnings of this in the Occupy Wall Street movement, which I addressed in a previous blog. We can see this destructive pattern in other countries, like Greece.

But since we have rejected God as a nation, I hold out little hope that He will turn us from our destructive and evil ways.